


you asked for this (he didn't; you spat in the face of him)

by lackingsoy



Series: hand over hand [3]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger, Bitterness, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, POV Andrew Minyard, andrew "i promised didn't i?" minyard, andrew gets his fake ass handed back to him, can b read as a standalone, kevin day gets validated, much angery, nicky hardcore third-wheels in this, renee "u broke it tho so imma break ur face" walker, renee takes sides, walker doesn't play nice :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26098354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackingsoy/pseuds/lackingsoy
Summary: “You were supposed to be better,” Renee said. “For him.”“That was never the deal,” Andrew told her.Re: the loud crash. What actually happened when Renee sought out the Monster(s).
Relationships: Andrew Minyard & Renee Walker, Kevin Day & Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Series: hand over hand [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887538
Comments: 13
Kudos: 73





	you asked for this (he didn't; you spat in the face of him)

**Author's Note:**

> _“I may have exacerbated his reaction.” Renee’s voice slid from behind Nicky’s form before she appeared, hair tousled but mostly untouched, cool-looking as always._  
>    
>  _Nicky shot her a look, part pained and part accusatory, before returning his eyes to Kevin. “She told Andrew to his face that you were better off with them, not him.” There was almost awe in his grimace. “She took sides.”_
> 
> -domestic bliss

Kevin's half of the room was surreptitiously empty, bed void of its usual dark mass of hair and gruff mumbling. Andrew didn't know why he expected otherwise. 

Hope, he thought, was a dangerous, disquieting thing he adjusted to too quickly.

Aaron didn't lift his head, headphones sealed completely over his ears, the loud bass of whatever he was playing filtering through the black material. Andrew made a point to pass through the outskirts of his vision, but his twin didn't pay him an inkling of attention.

He left swiftly, unable to stand the hugeness of Kevin's absence (and why was that, pray tell?), swiping the Tylenol from the kitchen table for Neil as he stalked by. 

He met his cousin and Renee at the door. Nicky tore himself away from her as if burned, and eyed Andrew with wide-eared surprise.

"Andrew," he started.

"What has she come to say," Andrew said, because he knew Renee wouldn't have come here at all otherwise. She looked at him with nothing in her face. But Andrew saw her jaw flex, the light flicker in the deep of her eyes.

"Um." Nicky swallowed. "She said Kevin won't be coming back tonight. Or," he paused, looking slightly sick. Andrew motioned him to continue. "Or anytime soon," Nicky finished, then dropped his gaze. Andrew felt a flare of heat across the back of his knuckles, finally lifting his chin to fully consider Renee.

She stood very still between him and the door, ghost-like and silent. An obstacle, Andrew thought.

“Is this you taking sides?” He asked her, even though the answer was in her eyes, in her loosely held arms, in the obsolete way she looked at him and saw all his wrongs. Her cross glinted at half-mast.

Renee didn’t answer immediately, staring at him from the doorway. Nicky eyed them both, anxious and fidgety but almost entirely certain of the incoming storm.

“You were supposed to be better,” she said. “For him.”

“That was never the deal,” Andrew told her.

“Your deal was to protect him.” Renee reminded him. “And you broke it.”

Andrew’s jaw clenched at the reminder. A pointless, dead thing. “I don’t regret it,” he said. He couldn’t. Not when Neil’s life was on the line, when losing him was a prospect he kept in his heart like a buried blade but had come too close to burying him, too. 

Renee stared through his chilled anger to peer and prod at him, the line of her gaze unwavering. “He would have told you if you asked.”

“If I asked.” Andrew’s lips curled and a destroyed sound slipped out of them, like a waterboarded chuckle. “Yes, or no, Kevin Day: is Neil going to still be alive by the end of today?”

“Yes,” Renee said, as solemn as a gravestone. “He would’ve said yes. He would’ve told you everything.

"Why didn’t you ask?”

 _Yes or no_ , Andrew thought, and was suddenly very desperately sick of it. He clamped his mouth shut and stared stonily back at her.

“Don't be infantile,” Renee said, devoid of sympathies. “You dug this hole. I let him go with you because I saw how clearly he believed in you. But I know now I was wrong to make that assessment."

No mercy did not look like a sword pushing between ribs. It was the exact gutting; it was the meticulous sheathing of the bone with the blade.

It was this: "Kevin is better off with us." 

Andrew knew, logically, that when he saw his empty side of the room, Kevin was somewhere with somebody else. Had to be. Kevin never liked to be alone. Andrew first considered the upperclassmen, but then he saw Kevin's prolonged closeness with Renee and Allison in their earlier meet and greet and his suspicions solidified. The two had their eyes trained on him the entire time--Andrew couldn't miss it, or dismiss the way Kevin hadn't shied from Allison's touch or rose at Renee's words.

The way Kevin leaned into them. A ligament of trust extended between him and them, shimmering and faint.

New protectors, taking up his recently vacated space. ( _Deserted, you mean_ , a voice said to him in the back of his head. 

_A rotten move,_ it said. _You promised, didn't you?_ )

"Say that again," Andrew said, vicious and searing and already snarling: "And you will not live to regret it."

His warning didn't warrant even a second's worth of consideration. Renee flashed her teeth at him. "You, Andrew Minyard, do not deserve Kevin Day."

Andrew came down on her.

Her arms were already up, barring him from access to her face. Nicky cried out. 

They sparred in their free time, but this was not a dance or a bout or a rendition of assaulter and assaultee. This was a fight, a clash between philosophies, between Renee’s sanctimonious fury and Andrew’s paradoxical anger. 

They go down hard.

Her boot clipped him in the side and he was thrown bodily into the coffee table. Something shattered beneath him. Nicky gave another strangled shout.

Before Andrew could get back up and shake off the kick or whatever he smashed, Renee grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and hauled him up, slamming him into the wall adjacent to the hallway, right next to the door. Andrew’s back rattled with the ferocity and force of it, bits of ceramic digging into his shoulder blades through his shirt, and he snarled, biting off the groan and baring his teeth. 

Renee bore down on him with all her weight, the arm leveled against his neck fixed and unyielding. Her face was dark. “He asked for you, even after what you did," she said, whispered it into the sliver of space between them like it would go off if she spoke any louder. "For _you._ He sounded so, so broken. Remember that; remember this," she told him. “Remember what you did to him. And know forgiveness is a grace not even God can bestow upon you.”

“I will kill your God,” Andrew spat around her lever of an arm, feeling sick, his insides twisting with the phantom memory of Drake shoving him down, the haunted face of Kevin staring up from beneath him.

Renee looked at him with frigid eyes. “You can try,” she said. “You’re just a boy, Andrew. And you hurt somebody I care about. You will live to regret it, I guarantee it.” She held him up for a second longer, easily, like he was a child, and finished: “I promise that the way you couldn’t him.”

Andrew kneed her in the abdomen. She fell back, pressure disappearing off his chest, and she clutched at her midriff with an arm, eyes honed on Andrew’s face. He was panting, he realized, fresh blood congregating at the back of his nose. 

“Fuck you,” he spat at her, with all the hate and venom he could muster, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. It came away red.

"Andrew," Nicky whispered. He was still there, frozen behind the kitchen island, watching them with terror-stricken eyes.

Andrew didn't answer as he rose and cleared the span of the room, shoving past Nicky's shaking shadow and forcing the door open with a fist.

"Don't come near us," Renee's voice came from behind, steel-like. She didn't have a speck of glass or blood on her when Andrew threw a look back; only a mess of hair for any indication of a physical altercation. Her eyes were dead. "You won't: this is non-negotiable. Not until Kevin can look at you and not have a panic attack. Not until he says you can."

Andrew stared at her from over the peak of his shoulder for a minute longer and felt the fight die slowly in him, as if strangled. He turned away without a sound. He felt something in his chest shutter and shut.

“Fine,” he said, and left Kevin there, behind him where Andrew could no longer see him. 


End file.
